


Swear Jars

by Shibani



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Swearing, character study (maybe?), no dialogues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:00:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21644299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shibani/pseuds/Shibani
Summary: Dustin comes up with an idea of keeping a swear jar at Steve's house and this is a study of its every contributor.
Relationships: Eleven|Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Jonathan Byers & Joyce Byers & Will Byers, Maxine 'Max' Mayfield & Eleven|Jane Hopper, Nancy Wheeler & Barbara Holland, Robin Buckley & Will Byers, Steve Harrington & Dustin Henderson, Steve Harrington & Robin Buckley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	Swear Jars

Steve knew about swear jars, of course! But thinking of the Hendersons owning one, and that Dustin dropping at least 24 coins each day, 1 coin for each hour made him chuckle.  
“Didn’t your parents keep a swear jar, asshole?”  
“Dusty!” Claudia hushed her son, looking pityingly at her guest, Steve Harrington. Everyone knew that the Harrington residence, though huge had a single occupant for at least 5 years now since the young boy was 13.  
“Sorry!” Dustin dropped a coin in the jar but knew why his mother had rebuked him. Steve decided to pick Tews and rub his ear instead of replying.  
“Dinner’s ready,” Claudia added hastily, sensing awkwardness creeping in.  
  
Steve had passed out on the couch itself, after thanking the Hendersons for the dinner, he had gone to Rhea’s house party, just to grab a beer. He wasn’t the king anymore, but Rhea and he had had a history and she thought that it was a good idea to invite him and stick to the new King, Billy Hargrove and rub it in his nose.  
Joke’s on her, he didn’t give a flying fuck and has instead gulped down 3 beer bottles and had left.  
So, when he heard muffled swearing, he opened his eyes to the curly mop walk around his living room.  
“WHAT THE FUCK!” He yelled when it hit him that Dustin had entered the house, and he had locked the door, hadn’t he?  
“Drop in a coin in the swear jar, I inaugurated it 15 minutes back,”  
“What am I? 12?”  
“No, you are almost 18, I know that, but mom uses all the money from the swear jar to buy food for street dogs, which in my opinion, is a stupid idea, so instead, we could collect money from the Party and buy something for ourselves each week, or hit the arcade with the money!”  
Steve was too hungover to understand what was going on right now but chose to hand over a coin to Dustin.  
“Oh, and you hadn’t locked the door, I am surprised that you aren’t robbed,”  
Steve handed a few coins to him after swearing at his stupidity.  
~~~~~  
Robin didn’t swear, which came as a surprise to Steve. Whoever stepped in the house had to put in the coin in the swear jar, and its main contributors were Steve, Dustin and Max. But Robin, who could come up with new insults even in her sleep, never said any swear word and she had been staying over for the last 2 weeks after the disaster that was the Star court Mall.  
So, Dustin and Steve had taken it up as a challenge to make her swear and would sneak up on her, try to piss her off, but could never make her say any profanity word.  
But when Will entered Steve’s house, one Sunday with tears in his eyes, and Mike complained about Troy calling him the “f” word, even Max(who learned to swear from Billy, thank you very much) learned new swear words and new torture techniques, before Robin wrapped the boy in a Mumma bear hug and ordered Steve to make cocoa.  
~~~~~  
One of the main rules (made by Hopper) the Party had to follow around El was not to use bad language. He didn’t want the poor kid, who was extending her vocabulary to learn profanity and whoever broke the rule wasn’t allowed to meet her for a week.  
So, after the snowball, it was Dustin who would see El the least and Max had learned it a hard way not to swear around Hopper because she knew that El could always use a sleepover and some girl time.  
But no one, except El and Max knew that Hopper swore like a crow cawing. But whenever he swore, he did a funny thing. He made a guilty face and would touch his fingers to El’s ears and act as if he collected the waves and throw his hand in the air, as if throwing the words away in the air, and say “You didn’t hear that word, girl” making El giggle. It was funny to her.  
So that was what she did, after losing Hopper to the Star court battle. Whenever someone swore around her, Steve would flip them on their head and El would throw the word away in the air.  
~~~~~  
Max wasn’t allowed to swear. “Young ladies don’t say those words,” Neil had made it crystal clear when Max had once yelled “Fuck” after getting a paper cut. So instead of swearing around Neil and Susan, she would start counting from one to ten.  
She knew it was not a great way of handling her emotions, but she didn’t want her face trashed in. Neil had once beaten Billy too badly for saying calling Max a “Bitch”.  
She wasn’t even allowed to swear around El, but this was different. She understood Hopper’s point of view of not wanting El to sing a string of expletives that first thing when she joined the school, but she could at least mutter a swear word. No one wanted to control Max here, she could have some breathing space for herself.  
~~~~~  
Will never swore. Whenever, by chance, a foul word escaped his mouth, he remembered his father saying those words to his mom, when she spoke to another man for more than 5 minutes, or when she complained of him coming home drunk.  
He didn’t want to be his father, and for some reason, he thought that if he swore, he might just turn into him.  
~~~~~  
Nancy said her first swear word “Fuck” when she was 6. She had walked in on two girls almost yanking each other’s hair, in the school’s women’s room, the blonde one yelling at the redhead for “sleeping with her boyfriend” and then had narrated the incident to Barbara, describing the way the two girls swore and hit each other in minute details, both finding it very funny.  
Why was it a big deal if the two slept together? What was the meaning of the word?  
Both were smart enough not to ask their mothers so instead searched the books (they were allowed to read) for a few hours but couldn’t find the meaning.  
At the end of the day, however, Nancy picked the novel her mother was reading and understood the meaning and made a disgusted face when she explained it to Barbara the next day.  
~~~~~  
10-year-old Steve never knew the meaning of the profanities he said to the boys around him. Tommy egged him on as he repeated the words he would hear his father yell from the study as he read through his files.  
Steve yelling “fag” at a bowl-cut classmate had made the then Hawkin’s King, James pay him some attention to Steve and take him under his wing.  
James was a brother Steve never had. He taught him to play basketball, taught him how to charm girls and gave him tips for other stuff as well.  
But one day, when he was about to call another boy “fairy”, James had stopped him and had made him promise never to say those words. He broke the promise when he fought with Jonathan 7 years later.  
~~~~~  
Lucas didn’t swear around his family. No, his mother would have his head if Erica had heard it and repeat it. But he liked to mutter one when the situation demanded it. His father would hear the words and would let it pass.  
It was a known secret between the two men that even the elder men did the same thing, after all, one of the few things Mrs. Sinclair didn’t like was swearing in her house, and they wanted to live in the house.  
“If I am not allowed to swear, so are you two! And if I want to be a responsible mother and not want my daughter singing a song with slangs as its lyrics at my brother’s party, I shouldn’t swear.”  
But when Erica turned 10, Mrs. Sinclair gave up and lifted the rule, for, every time Erica wanted to cuss, she would say the chemical elements’ symbol to spell out the words.  
~~~~~  
The only time Mike’s father ever behaved like a parent was when he or Nancy swore, yelling out a “Language!”, so only to get a reaction out of him, it was an unsaid rule between the two siblings to yell out one cuss word each and sometimes even their Mom joined in.  
~~~~~  
Jonathan swore. Joyce believed in the therapy of yelling out profanities. But sometimes Will would flinch, and Jonathan knew that Will was reminded of his father, so he would never say harsh words around Will but watching Joyce yell out words while searching for her keys was a good pastime for both the boys.  
~~~~~  
Dustin hated the swear jar. Heck, he would lose a good amount of money every day and a few street dogs always made a profit because of him. But after indirectly commenting on Steve’s parents’ absence, a brilliant idea hit him and now he didn’t mind the swear jars, after all, the money was enough to have a Dig Dug match with Max with Will finally tell two to drop in a heavy amount of money in the jar at the end of the match, collection for the next week.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopper throwing away the swear words in the air is what I do after swearing around kids. The first time I swore, I didn't know what it meant and was kind of embarrassed after knowing the meaning.  
> So most of these come form a personal space.  
> Hope you like it. :)


End file.
